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Speculation into the future of Google’s PageRank algorithm, according to five patent applications recently filed, suggest this next-generation search engine could gain access to more interactive programming and allow more involvement by outside Webmasters.

In a recent article by Information Week, Stephen E. Arnold, managing director of Arnold IT and the author of a book on Google, said his analysis of recent patents filed by Google indicates the search engine company will be able to increase its dominance of the search market and dashes predictions that competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo will whittle away at the firm’s lead.

Arnold, whose opinions were outlined this week in a Bear Stearns report, said Google is augmenting its PageRank algorithm by beefing up its search and indexing methodology. The key patent applications, published in February, would create a Programmable Search Engine that would lead to more structured Web page data.

“The PSE will be the basic foundation behind Google’s Semantic Web and will be invisible to the searcher, but will augment the search experience to a level that will be hard for competitors to duplicate quickly or easily,” the Bear Stearns report states.

According to the report, PSE will allow Webmasters to program an Internet search engine to categorize site content in very specific ways. This will allow Google and other search engines to identify the content as belonging to specific domains of expertise as well as to identify complex relationships with other sources of information.

PSE is expected to be in use by the end of the year.

Google’s next-generation search results could mean trouble for Search Engine Optimization, yet on a positive note it may reduce spoofed results by spammers. The basis of the PSE is to provide more detailed and targeted results for individual users and could lead to advances in media search and dynamic content.

Webmasters will be expected to “tag” content in metadata to define what type of information is being provided. This new way of identifying content will most likely be presented as an extension of Google’s Webmaster Tools. Google is, in effect, attempting to change the pecking order of the Web, from having search engines scanning the entire sites themselves to asking Webmasters “to tell us what you got,” Arnold said.